eCatholic Year in Review 2018: Setting you up for future success

43,347 conversations conducted with customers. 295 bugs undeniably squashed. 77 Help Docs happily published. Two new products released to the interwebs. One unforgettable 2018.

All these stats are great, but they don't tell the whole story. The real question is: What did we really do for you in 2018?

We recently took a stroll through the past 12 months. Alas, we were prepared to present an
exhaustive list of features released, upgrades implemented, and accomplishments achieved. But, to be completely honest, it was
ridiculously long.

Instead, we've narrowed it down. Here are four general categories we tackled in 2018 – and how our progress in these areas will help us better partner with you to dominate digital evangelization in 2019 and beyond.

Making it easier to create a beautiful website

Websites are our bread and butter. And we're on a constant quest to discover ways we can help you not only create a website, but to
make it beautiful. After all, effective evangelization requires us to
show the beauty of our faith.

As a result, check out the following ways we aimed to help you accomplish this goal in 2018. If you haven't taken advantage, you've already got a jump start on your first project of 2019. :)

Fresh, modern, and free Catholic website designs - Our design team continues to push to create beautiful, free Catholic website designs. In 2018, our new free themes (namely Santiago, Lourdes, Loyola, and Verona) provide the option for larger homepage feature regions, versatile layouts, and complementary color palettes. Of course, our Custom Design and Branding Package services can also help you take it to the next level.

eCatholic Stock Photos - Blurry and pixelated photos can quickly ruin a website design. We've realized that many Catholic organizations simply don't have enough quality images at their disposal. Our solution: eCatholic Stock Photos. With a subscription to this new product, you get access to a growing library of high-quality Catholic images that you can use on your website, bulletins, flyers, and more.

Trust us, this will continue to be an area of focus in 2019, and we're actively cooking up more exciting design upgrades!

Our goal with eCatholic Payments, our online payment and donation product, has always been to transform the way Catholics give.

All of our research has clearly shown that Catholics need online donation and payment software that is seamless, credible, convenient, secure, and affordable.

To bring this goal into even sharper focus, we added Donor Self-Management to every eCatholic Payments account in 2018. With this feature, donors can create an online account via which they can manage their recurring gifts anytime, anywhere.

Dive Deeper: eCatholic Release Notes

Find even more details about eCatholic’s latest upgrades and releases by perusing our monthly Release Notes.

Video: The future of digital evangelization

Several of our 2018 developments focused on ways to incorporate video into your digital evangelization toolbox. We asked: How can we make it easier to use the power of video to share the Gospel? Here's our answer:

eCatholic LIVE - In May, we launched our powerful, simplified video streaming product, eCatholic LIVE. Whether you're streaming Mass, sports, weddings, or other celebrations, you can use eCatholic LIVE to schedule and stream live events without physically being there. As we aim to take the stress and headache out of live streaming, we anticipate video streaming will continue to be an incredible area of opportunity for Catholic evangelizers in 2019.

Video Mode for your homepage - Even more than still images, video can effectively tell a story, evoke emotion, or simply capture someone’s attention. The new Video Mode featureallows you to easily add a video to your homepage feature region or automatically feature a live stream on the homepage...all without touching any complicated HTML code.

Under the hood: Server infrastructure improvements

This year our development team has been hard at work improving the eCatholic server infrastructure. The first phase of the project involved migrating our servers to AWS (Amazon Web Services), which provides a more dynamic and secure server system with better performance, efficiency, and speed.

In addition, our recent upgrade to the AWS file system completed a total eCatholic infrastructure transformation. With these changes, the software now powering eCatholic products is faster and more flexible...just in time for Christmas. :)

We wouldn’t have had such an incredible year without you and your support, feedback, and shared passion for evangelization. Thanks for the opportunity to serve you – God bless!